Lincolnshire lies in eastern England on the North Sea. In
1974 the new county of Humberside
was formed from part of the county together with part of Yorkshire.
Humberside has since been broken up into smaller authorities.

The
father of King Canute and first of four Danish Kings of EnglandSweyn
Forkbeard died in 1014 after a riding accident at Gainsborough.

Areas of Outstanding
Natural Beauty

The Lincolnshire
Wolds are a series of chalk hills which lie midway between the
city of Lincoln and the coast. They stretch from the River
Humber in the north to the Wash in the south and were designated
an AONB in 1973.

Sir
John Franklin was born in Spilsby in 1786. He died in 1847 off
King William Island in the Northwest Territories of Canada whilst
searching for the Northwest Passage.Sir
John Franklin

Famous
People

Anne Askew
was born in Grimsby in 1521. In 1546 she became the only woman to
be tortured at the Tower
of London after being arrested in London for heresy, a result
of her openly preaching her Protestant beliefs. The same year she
was burnt at the stake at Smithfield.Famous
people imprisoned at the Tower of London

The preachers John
Wesley and his brother Charles were born in Epworth in 1703 and 1707 respectively.
While studying at Oxford in 1729 Charles set up a religious group
called the "Oxford Methodists" which his brother later joined.
This was the beginnings of Methodism
which the brothers would found together with George Whitefield. Originally
a movement within the Church of England, the Methodists were eventually
forced to separate and form their own church.

In 1131 Gilbert, the parish priest at Sempringham, a small hamlet
near the village of Bourne, set up the only religious order
to originate in England. The Gilbertines
were a monastic order which eventually built 12 monasteries
in Lincolnshire and the neighbouring counties.

In 1143 the first Premonstratensian
abbey to be built in England, was established at Newhouse Abbey,
near Brocklesby. The Premonstratensians were a monastic order
founded at Premontré near Laon in France in 1120. In
their heyday in the 12th century the order had 31 abbeys and
3 nunneries across England.

Henry
IV
who was to become the first monarch from the House of Lancaster,
was born at Bolingbroke
Castle in 1367. He ruled from 1399-1413 and was the first
monarch since the Norman Conquest whose native tongue was English
and not French.Henry
IV

Nobel
Prize Winners

Peace

Born
as Ralph Norman Angell Lane in Holbeach in 1872 the pacifist
and writer Sir
Norman Angell won the Nobel
Prize for Peace in 1933. He wrote The Great Illusion
in 1910 which showed how war made no economic sense for the
victors.

Britain's
first woman Prime Minister from 1979-90, Margaret
Thatcher
was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham in 1925. Winning three
elections in a row she became the longest serving Prime Minister of
the 20th century. Thatcherism became a byword for encouraging free
markets and "individualism" whilst reducing the involvement
and support of the state in people's lives.

Radical and contentious the policies changed the face of British society
and met with stiff opposition. This opposition eventually reached
her own party and Cabinet colleagues and in 1990 she resigned having
lost their confidence. She was replaced by John Major who went on
to win the 1992 election.

The
poet
Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby rectory. He becamePoet
Laureate
on the death of William Wordsworth in 1850 until his own death in
1892 after which he was succeeded by Alfred Austin.